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Post by kyredneck on Jan 22, 2016 13:19:53 GMT -5
In 'The Resilient Gardner' Carol Depp tells of her experience with drying various squashes and concludes "Variety was everything" (for flavor). She names some varieties she found to be very flavorful, of which two, 'Costata Romanesca' and 'Golden Zucchini', I intend to grow and dry this summer.
My own similar experience is, by far, most of the prepared shuck beans (leather britches) I've eaten in my life were, well, mediocre, OK, but nothing that inspired me to pursue producing them myself. I did buy some w/enclosed instructions at a local festival a few years ago, and another time a pack of Bill Best's at the seed swap and followed his instructions which were very good. But a few weeks ago my gardening friend Judith (who originally turned me on to eating and growing greasy beans and is an experienced maker and connoisseur of shuck beans) gave me a half gallon bag of Greasy Grit shuck beans and these things were gourmet eating, I kid you not. My wife and I both wholeheartedly agree, we would rather have these Greasy Grit shuck beans than fresh, frozen, or canned, and we love fresh and home canned green beans. Judith, her husband, and son JJ agree, these shuck beans are their favorite. Anyway, needless to say, I'm in full shuck bean production mode this season and will also be experimenting with varieties other than this small brown speckled greasy grit. I even found a good deal on Craig's List and picked up a couple of display model Gander Mountain commercial dehydrators at half price, so I intend to dry a lot of beans, along with some squash and the usual tomatoes, peppers and misc. stuff this season.
Have any of you all fruit or vegetable 'favorites' that dehydrate well in the flavor department?
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Post by steev on Jan 22, 2016 13:32:04 GMT -5
Dried hachiya persimmons: best fruit-candy ever.
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 22, 2016 13:41:28 GMT -5
steev I made leather from wild persimmons around here once and it was OK but not what I was after. There are a few of the wild trees that cling to their fruits up into Dec & Jan and they raisin on the tree and are delicious eating whenever you can find the ones the birds haven't beat you to. That's the flavor I was after, but for some reason the leather didn't even come close.
[add]
I planted a couple of the most cold hardy oriental persimmons I could find some thirty years ago and the first winter was sub-zero, and, well, that was the end of that venture. |
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 22, 2016 14:07:03 GMT -5
Here's another one I intend to grow this year:
From Mother Earth News - Brook Elliot's section:
"Jaune Flamme Orange Tomato
An old French variety, "Jaune Flamme" is a fabulous fresh-eating tomato with an explosive, intense flavor that shines through any salad dressing with ease.
The outer walls are thick and meaty, with just enough juice to provide a full-bodied, citrus-like flavor that surprises all who try it for the first time. The real joy is cutting into one. The yellow-orange skin yields to beautiful red-mottled flesh inside.
Although this heirloom is excellent for fresh salads, it reaches its full potential as a drying tomato. It has such an exquisite flavor that I use it exclusively when baking, especially in breads.
A joy to grow as well as to eat, the plants are indeterminate (bearing fruit continuously) and early producers, and seem resistant to many diseases that normally plague tomatoes. The fruits are held in clusters of six to eight, each fruit the size of a golf ball or slightly larger.
Seed is available from the Seed Savers Exchange catalog and Tomato Growers Supply (listed as "Flamme").
— Melody Rose
Benton, Kentucky "
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Post by ferdzy on Jan 22, 2016 15:25:50 GMT -5
Hmmmmm...
Squash: haven't dried many but so far not a fan. Probably a vicious circle.
Peppers: Alma paprika tastes great but grinds kind of sticky. Aleppo is superb.
Tomatoes: Also hear good things about Jaune Flammé. I think I dried some and thought them good but perhaps not quite up to the hype. Principe Borghese is the classic drying tomato because it has the right texture and is LOW in sugar. It tastes lousy fresh, but when the sugars concentrate during drying it leaves it tasting like a tomato and not tomato flavoured candy. That can be a problem with lots of the cherry tomatoes, which seem logical for drying but end up being very sweet and seedy.
Corn: So far whatever variety of sweet corn I have bought at the side of the road and dried has been GREAT. Dried is just as good as frozen and better than canned.
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Post by reed on Jan 22, 2016 17:22:11 GMT -5
Anyway, needless to say, I'm in full shuck bean production mode this season and will also be experimenting with varieties other than this small brown speckled greasy grit.
Have any of you all fruit or vegetable 'favorites' that dehydrate well in the flavor department?
Do those beans look anything like the ones I sent you? I have been wanting to try shuck beans too, think I'll try a few greasy types and maybe those Ohio Pole. We have mostly just dried various peppers and find them all to be pretty good. Yup, those persimmons that hang on the trees and turn into not much but a clump of seeds wrapped in goo are the best. |
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Post by diane on Jan 22, 2016 17:22:59 GMT -5
I dry many different kinds of tomatoes, and they all taste great. I've never kept any separate.
What are shuck beans? and what does one do with them?
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Post by Walk on Jan 23, 2016 9:40:23 GMT -5
In 'The Resilient Gardner' Carol Depp tells of her experience with drying various squashes and concludes "Variety was everything" (for flavor). She names some varieties she found to be very flavorful, of which two, 'Costata Romanesca' and 'Golden Zucchini' We grow and dry the Costata Romanesca. It's great as a "filler" in pasta sauce and soups like chili, potato, minestrone, and corn chowder. Great texture and holds up well to cooking. Most varieties, if they taste at all good raw, will be good for drying as the flavor/sugars will concentrate. We've grown the Principe Borghese tomato for drying but ended up preferring our Stupice because we like the flavor of these better. It all depends on personal preferences and how you plan on using them in the kitchen. Some foods (like green beans, sweet corn, broccoli, asparagus) will have better flavor if first blanched lightly. As for dehydrators, you can read about our solar food dryer, about half way down the page on this link, which we developed over 30 years ago. It works great for all kinds of produce, even in the humid upper midwest, and it won't make your electric meter spin like crazy. |
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 23, 2016 10:29:20 GMT -5
Hmmmmm... Squash: haven't dried many but so far not a fan. Probably a vicious circle. Peppers: Alma paprika tastes great but grinds kind of sticky. Aleppo is superb. Tomatoes: Also hear good things about Jaune Flammé. I think I dried some and thought them good but perhaps not quite up to the hype. Principe Borghese is the classic drying tomato because it has the right texture and is LOW in sugar. It tastes lousy fresh, but when the sugars concentrate during drying it leaves it tasting like a tomato and not tomato flavoured candy. That can be a problem with lots of the cherry tomatoes, which seem logical for drying but end up being very sweet and seedy. Corn: So far whatever variety of sweet corn I have bought at the side of the road and dried has been GREAT. Dried is just as good as frozen and better than canned.
Thanks ferdzy, I picked up some Aleppo seeds at the swap and Burpee (been preparing an order from them anyway) carries Principe Borghese. I will add these to my 'to grow list'. I was also given a fresh 'Turkish Paprika' pepper at the swap and it was superb mildly spicy fresh eating, and am planning on drying some also this season.
The only sweet corn I ever dried was Silver Queen and it was excellent. I have a 20+ year old gallon bag stored in my freezer that I'm going to test one of these days.
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 23, 2016 11:24:23 GMT -5
Anyway, needless to say, I'm in full shuck bean production mode this season and will also be experimenting with varieties other than this small brown speckled greasy grit.
Have any of you all fruit or vegetable 'favorites' that dehydrate well in the flavor department?
Do those beans look anything like the ones I sent you? I have been wanting to try shuck beans too, think I'll try a few greasy types and maybe those Ohio Pole. We have mostly just dried various peppers and find them all to be pretty good. Yup, those persimmons that hang on the trees and turn into not much but a clump of seeds wrapped in goo are the best. They look nearly identical, your's may be ever so slightly smaller. Between me, Dad, my brother, or one of my two daughters, I definitely intend on growing it out somewhere this season.
I'm now convinced that "variety means everything" when it comes to very flavorful shuck beans. There's actually not a lot of info to be gleaned from the internet concerning the best varieties to make shuck beans. There's a lot of first time experimenters relating their experiences but few focus on the importance of the dried seed, most are just drying pods. 30+ years ago I dried some Blue Lake pole beans and they were awful. They were exactly as Bill Best described as tasting like straw if they are not soaked and drained repeatedly prior to cooking, which I didn't do. But here's what has my attention; Judith does NOT soak and drain these greasy shucks at all. She says you lose flavor when you do that, which is exactly what I've thought. I DID soak and drain the beans she gave me, twice, and they still were some of the best eating I've ever had.
I am now wondering if it's the dried microscopic 'fuzz' on non-greasies that gives the straw taste, and it's this 'fuzz' that you're washing away with the repeated draining. It may be that most or all greasy beans don't require the soaks and drains.
I dry a few baccatums and lots of Jimmy Nardello's.
Yes, been eating those 'persimmon raisins' since I was a kid. Wish the flavor could be replicated in the dryer but I had no luck with it.
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 23, 2016 11:29:30 GMT -5
I dry many different kinds of tomatoes, and they all taste great. I've never kept any separate. What are shuck beans? and what does one do with them?
I 'blend' as many varieties as possible whenever canning sauce/juice, we call it ambrosia due to the incredible flavor(s).
Scroll down to 'Leather Britches':
www.heirlooms.org/bean-terminology.html
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Post by kyredneck on Jan 24, 2016 7:09:28 GMT -5
In 'The Resilient Gardner' Carol Depp tells of her experience with drying various squashes and concludes "Variety was everything" (for flavor). She names some varieties she found to be very flavorful, of which two, 'Costata Romanesca' and 'Golden Zucchini' We grow and dry the Costata Romanesca. It's great as a "filler" in pasta sauce and soups like chili, potato, minestrone, and corn chowder. Great texture and holds up well to cooking. Most varieties, if they taste at all good raw, will be good for drying as the flavor/sugars will concentrate. We've grown the Principe Borghese tomato for drying but ended up preferring our Stupice because we like the flavor of these better. It all depends on personal preferences and how you plan on using them in the kitchen. Some foods (like green beans, sweet corn, broccoli, asparagus) will have better flavor if first blanched lightly. As for dehydrators, you can read about our solar food dryer, about half way down the page on this link, which we developed over 30 years ago. It works great for all kinds of produce, even in the humid upper midwest, and it won't make your electric meter spin like crazy. "Most varieties, if they taste at all good raw, will be good for drying". That's what I've been told and read concerning varieties to use for shuck beans, and that ought to apply to most everything else. Some reviews I've read about the Principe Borghese tomato is it's not so good fresh but excellent dried.
Never grown Stupice but Matina is one of my three drying tomatoes, along with Black Cherry and a Matina sized volunteer from Dad's garden which is quite tart fresh but very flavorful dried and blends well with the other two.
I'm not decided on blanching. Correct me if I'm wrong, 'the sooner the dried food is consumed, like within a year, the less the need for blanching', that seems to be my experience with tomatoes and peppers. I taste tested a handful of [not blanched] dried apples that's been in the freezer for eight years this summer and they were still very good. Also there was a thread on Gardenweb where it was tried and decided that blanching negatively affected the flavor of [Blue Greasy Grit (I think)] shuck beans, and every 'old timer' says that shuck beans they remember growing up were never blanched. I'll probably dabble with some blanching (I have a very large steamer pot) just to see, but I'm not sold on it being an absolute necessity for shorter term storage.
Thank you very much for turning me on to your ingenious radiant heat solar dryer design. I've actually contemplated something along those lines but couldn't get past the problem of the food shading the absorber. I still have the old windows from replacement in our house years ago stored in the barn just for maybe someday building such a dryer. I may have missed it, but I'm curious if there's a way to shut off outside air at night to prevent or slow moisture re-absorbing into the food.
Just last week I ordered 15' of polypropylene mesh from McMaster-Carr to cover the trays of these new dryers I bought because the open space is too large for things like bean seeds, corn, diced or shredded food, etc.. Whole pods of green beans should dry nicely without the added mesh but there's always going to be loose shellys from stringing the pods so the mesh is needed for those. |
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Post by Walk on Jan 24, 2016 12:16:07 GMT -5
[/p] I'm not decided on blanching. Correct me if I'm wrong, 'the sooner the dried food is consumed, like within a year, the less the need for blanching', that seems to be my experience with tomatoes and peppers. I taste tested a handful of [not blanched] dried apples that's been in the freezer for eight years this summer and they were still very good. Also there was a thread on Gardenweb where it was tried and decided that blanching negatively affected the flavor of [Blue Greasy Grit (I think)] shuck beans, and every 'old timer' says that shuck beans they remember growing up were never blanched. I'll probably dabble with some blanching (I have a very large steamer pot) just to see, but I'm not sold on it being an absolute necessity for shorter term storage.
Thank you very much for turning me on to your ingenious radiant heat solar dryer design. I've actually contemplated something along those lines but couldn't get past the problem of the food shading the absorber. I still have the old windows from replacement in our house years ago stored in the barn just for maybe someday building such a dryer. I may have missed it, but I'm curious if there's a way to shut off outside air at night to prevent or slow moisture re-absorbing into the food.
Just last week I ordered 15' of polypropylene mesh from McMaster-Carr to cover the trays of these new dryers I bought because the open space is too large for things like bean seeds, corn, diced or shredded food, etc.. Whole pods of green beans should dry nicely without the added mesh but there's always going to be loose shellys from stringing the pods so the mesh is needed for those. [/quote] We've found that blanching works best on those veggies that would ordinarily be converting their sugars into starch for seed storage, like corn, peas, beans, and broccoli/cauliflower/asparagus (not sure why those particular veggies do better with blanching - maybe the thick stems get tough?). We never blanch anything else but we may do some edamame this year and would cook the pods and shell for drying the same as for eating. Our dryer design, with the food under the heat collector, keeps the sun off the food. I know some folks have a hard time understanding how something so simple can work as it seems a bit counter-intuitive at first glance and many want to make it more complicated, but it really, really works great all on its own. We've never had to close it up at night. Any moisture reabsorbed overnight readily evaporates in the morning. The key is to get stuff dry enough the first day so a little moisture won't matter. Sometimes a bit of overnight moisture can be an advantage in getting stuck food off the screen the next morning as it will release more readily than when it's dried on hard. Once the food is released from the screen, it won't stick again. As for the polypro netting you just ordered, I hope that it's food grade and meant for high heat applications. Plastics degrade under the best of conditions and outgassing can occur from the start, with particles flaking or shredding off over time. If you go ahead with the polypro, I would advise putting it out in the dryer for a couple of weeks or more to outgas before you put food on it. Then keep a careful eye on it to see if the surface is breaking down, even using a magnifying lens to check it (check it when new as a baseline as to how it should look). When we originally started experimenting with solar dryers in the early 1980's, we were using fiberglass window screen but learned that lead is used is some fiberglass screen products AND they started to degrade and particles were coming off. That's when we switched to stainless steel, which is a once in a lifetime investment. We sell it on our website so people can get it at a reasonable price. |
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Post by steve1 on Jan 25, 2016 0:19:42 GMT -5
I'd recommend green gage plums, Coes golden drop and Prune D'Agen. All dry really well with lots of dry matter. The blood plums I dried amounted to very little, all water - better for jam.
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Post by reed on Jan 25, 2016 8:35:42 GMT -5
Walk, could you explain a little more about why it's important to keep the sun off the food? Is it the same for all foods? I'v dried tomato slices in direct sun but have had whole peppers go bad that way.
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